Research: Saul Bass

I have decided to choose Saul Bass as the subject of my time capsule so I will be undertaking more detailed research in to who he was and his work. From previous projects and experiences with his work I know he was a very talented designer in the 50s and 60s (and even later) who revolutionised movie title sequences. The first title sequence I ever saw of his was for Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece 'Psycho' which I watched a couple of years ago. Although not obviously not as technically impressive by today's standards it still stood out to me as something that was special for the time period (1960).

I will now look and find more information about him. According to Wikipedia:

"Saul Bass (May 8, 1920—April 25, 1996) was an American graphic designer and Academy Award-winning filmmaker, but he is best known for his design on animated motion picture title sequences, which is thought of as the best such work ever seen."

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Bass

This shows he died fairly recently at the age of 74. I didn't know that he was also a film maker and not just a graphic designer which shows his creativity was not just limited to title sequences and print. It also offers an opinion that he is thought of as one of the best title sequence designers, which I think justifies him as a worthy topic for the project.

The first title sequence he worked on was for Otto Preminger's film adaptation of the musical Carmen Jones. Not only was the film considered to be edgy as it featured largely an African American cast [1] and the title sequence stood out as being something special, where before title sequences were not seen as an area for creativity. He also worked on many other famous films such as The Man with the Golden Arm, Anatomy of a Murder, Psycho, West Side Story, Oceans Eleven and even on more modern films such as Goodfellas. [2]

Here are some of his movie posters: